REMOVAL OF PROPERTY

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 August 1946, Page 6

REMOVAL OF PROPERTY

WIDESPREAD ACTION BY RUSSIA AMERICAN ALLEGATIONS NEW YORK, August 2. ’ “By the end of the year the Soviet will have removed 2,200,000,000 dollars worth of property from Finland, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, according to estimates in Washington from private and official sources,” reports the Washington correspondent of the New York Times. “With the addition of dollars in reparations, the total Russian acquisitions on account of war booty restitution, occupation costs, removal of German assets, and bilateral. trade agreements will be prought to approximately 3,000,000,000. “The figures are regaraed as conservative and do not include the value of Russian gains from eastern Germany and from Manchuria nor the value of the forced labour which Russia has employed under the category ‘reparations in kind.’ The figures are regarded in Washington as having considerable significance in relation to the necessity for the additional foreign credits which the Russians claim they need from the United States and elsewhere. “Experts point out that the bulk of property’ re-; moved from the four countries greatly weakened their production.